Blog posts tagged with 'romania'

Kindly contributed by Lucy Abel-Smith, author of the new Blue Guide Travels in Transylvania. With maps, plans and photographs, this accessible guide to Transylvania's "land that time forgot" focuses on its small towns. With cultural heritage from Romania, Hungaria, Saxony and Judaea, the lovely Tarnava Valley is home to an extraordinary mix of cultures and landscapes.

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Richis/Reichesdorf is a small village in the centre of Transylvania, now part of Romania but Hungarian until 1918. It thrived under its Saxon population, from its 12th century foundation under the Hungarian kings.

Like many travelers, journalist Robert Kaplan was first inspired to journey to Romania because of a book. In 1981, he served a year in the Israel Defense Forces and as his commitment drew to an end, he wondered what to do next. Serendipity intervened when he grabbed a copy of The Governments of Communist East Europe by H. Gordon Skilling off a dusty bookshelf. After absorbing the book, he decided to fly to Romania as soon as possible. “That book made me a foreign correspondent,” he reflects, “even though no one had hired me.”
Kaplan credits that first trip with giving his life a direction that never altered.

Like many travelers, we’re already looking ahead to spring. Whether plotting your travels or simply hoping for a good armchair vacation, here are some titles to watch for as the weather warms.
Why the Dutch are Different. Mingling history with travelogue, English expat Ben Coates speaks to why the Netherlands is such a fascinating country, significant beyond its size. His probing narrative explains the importance of the color orange, the ongoing battle to keep water out, the Dutch love affairs with milk and beer, their attitudes toward nature, their world-famous culture of tolerance and why there are many “nether lands.”